The platforms of the Green and Conservative parties have one obvious thing in common — there isn’t the slightest chance that either will be put to the test after the votes are counted on May 14.

Beyond that, however, they also display a wealth of ideas that are not getting much attention from the parties that are likely to form the next government.

The Green party doesn’t describe their document as a platform, but rather as a “living document” that transcends elections and is updated from time to time.

Think of it as an a-la-carte menu crammed with more choices than could ever be consumed at a single sitting. It’s a soup-to-nuts prescription for a new society where everything worthy is achievable — at least in a context in which you don’t have to provide a full costing or explain where the money will come from to pay the bills.

The Conservatives have taken the opposite approach, with the release last month of a fiscal framework they say is fully balanced into which they are now dropping specific initiatives.

They have taken the novel and simplistic approach of counting on the increased revenue implied by anticipated growth in the economy to fund their promises.

That gives them more money than either the Liberals or NDP for new initiatives, including phasing out the carbon tax. Their revenue projections are probably wrong, but so are all forecasts that try to look more than a few months out.

They also use simple math to add their voice to those questioning the credibility of the Liberal’s budget that was tabled in February. They point out that for the Liberals to hold to their spending commitments, government spending would have to fall to a modern-day record low as a portion of the economy, but the Liberal platform calls only for holding spending increases to a pace that equals growth in the economy.

The Conservatives also provide a worthwhile counterpoint to the already tedious argument between the Liberals and New Democrats about how the province fared under their care in years past. It’s a fight that is waged with carefully selected statistics that make it difficult to find an unbiased perspective.

The Conservative platform offers a review of the past several decades that isn’t spun by an interest in making any of the previous governments look good. Not surprisingly, the bias runs in the opposite direction.

So instead of a lost decade of the 1990s, you can see that, based on some commonly cited indicators, the B.C. economy has been slumping since the 1970s, through Social Credit, NDP and Liberal governments.

It illustrates how neither the New Democrats nor the Liberals have been able to consistently deliver a balanced budget, and how average weekly earnings in British Columbia slipped under both regimes when compared to other provinces.

They show that while many British Columbians did leave the province in the second half of the 1990s, to argue that the NDP drove them out is far too simplistic a story. Migration levels rise and fall with the economy in both the 1990s and the past decade.

They also illustrate that while if Premier Christy Clark is right, B.C.’s future as an LNG producer is rich and bright, the present is not so rosy. Natural resources revenues as a portion of the economy have fallen by half over the past decade and are not expected to increase significantly in the next few years.

One of the ways the Conservatives would like to change that is through their unqualified support of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Project. That position puts them at odds not just with the Green party, which is calling for a retreat from dependence on oil and gas, but also with the Liberals and NDP.

Based on opinion polls, that also puts Conservatives offside with a majority of British Columbians, but they do have populist measures, including a proposal for a tax credit for frequent ferry users.

Neither the Greens nor the Conservatives expect to get a chance to put their plans into action. But both parties hope to be represented in the legislature.

And just maybe, they will see at least some of their ideas translated into action.

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